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Title: Biographia Literaria
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #6081]
Most recently updated: October 14, 2023
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6081
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA ***
BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
LIST OF CONTENTS
CHAP.
I Motives to the present work--Reception of the Author's first
publication--Discipline of his taste at school--Effect of
contemporary writers on youthful minds--Bowles's Sonnets--
Comparison between the poets before and since Pope
II Supposed irritability of genius brought to the test of
facts--Causes and occasions of the charge--Its injustice
III The Author's obligations to Critics, and the probable
occasion--Principles of modern criticism--Mr. Southey's
works and character
IV The Lyrical Ballads with the Preface--Mr. Wordsworth's
earlier poems--On Fancy and Imagination--The investigation
of the distinction important to the Fine Arts
V On the law of Association--Its history traced from Aristotle
to Hartley
VI That Hartley's system, as far as it differs from that of
Aristotle, is neither tenable in theory, nor founded
in facts
VII Of the necessary consequences of the Hartleian Theory--Of
the original mistake or equivocation which procured its
admission--Memoria technica
VIII The system of Dualism introduced by Des Cartes--Refined
first by Spinoza and afterwards by Leibnitz into the
doctrine of Harmonia praestabilita--Hylozoism--Materialism
--None of these systems, or any possible theory of
Association, supplies or supersedes a theory of
Perception, or explains the formation of the Associable
XI Is Philosophy possible as a science, and what are its
conditions?--Giordano Bruno--Literary Aristocracy, or the
existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a
privileged order--The Author's obligations to the Mystics-
To Immanuel Kant--The difference between the letter and
The spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of
Prudence in the teaching of Philosophy--Fichte's attempt
to complete the Critical system-Its partial success and
ultimate failure--Obligations to Schelling; and among
English writers to Saumarez
X A Chapter of digression and anecdotes, as an interlude
preceding that on the nature and genesis of the Imagination
or Plastic Power--On Pedantry and pedantic expressions--
Advice to young authors respecting publication--Various
anecdotes of the Author's literary life, and the progress
of his opinions in Religion and Politics
XI An affectionate exhortation to those who in early life feel
themselves disposed to become authors
XII A Chapter of requests and premonitions concerning the perusal
or omission of the chapter that follows
XIII On the Imagination, or Esemplastic power
XIV Occasion of the Lyrical Ballads, and the objects originally
proposed--Preface to the second edition--The ensuing
controversy, its causes and acrimony--Philosophic
definitions of a Poem and Poetry with scholia
XV The specific symptoms of poetic power elucidated in a
Critical analysis of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis, and
Rape of Lucrece
XVI Striking points of difference between the Poets of the
present age and those of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries--Wish expressed for the union of the
characteristic merits of both
XVII Examination of the tenets peculiar to Mr. Wordsworth--
Rustic life (above all, low and rustic life) especially
unfavourable to the formation of a human diction-The
best parts of language the product of philosophers, not of
clowns or shepherds--Poetry essentially ideal and generic--
The language of Milton as much the language of real life,
yea, incomparably more so than that of the cottager
XVIII Language of metrical composition, why and wherein essentially
different from that of prose--Origin and elements of metre
--Its necessary consequences, and the conditions thereby
imposed on the metrical writer in the choice of his diction
XIX Continuation--Concerning the real object, which, it is
probable, Mr. Wordsworth had before him in his critical
preface--Elucidation and application of this
XX The former subject continued--The neutral style, or that
common to Prose and Poetry, exemplified by specimens from
Chaucer, Herbert, and others
XXI Remarks on the present mode of conducting critical journals
XXII The characteristic defects of Wordsworth's poetry, with the
principles from which the judgment, that they are defects,
is deduced--Their proportion to the beauties--For the
greatest part characteristic of his theory only
SATYRANE'S LETTERS
XXIII Critique on Bertram
XXIV Conclusion
So wenig er auch bestimmt seyn mag, andere zu belehren, so wuenscht
er doch sich denen mitzutheilen, die er sich gleichgesinnt weis, (oder
hofft,) deren Anzahl aber in der Breite der Welt zerstreut ist; er
wuenscht sein Verhaeltniss zu den aeltesten Freunden dadurch wieder
anzuknuepfen, mit neuen es fortzusetzen, und in der letzten Generation
sich wieder andere fur seine uebrige Lebenszeit zu gewinnen. Er wuenscht
der Jugend die Umwege zu ersparen, auf denen er sich selbst verirrte.
(Goethe. Einleitung in die Propylaeen.)
TRANSLATION. Little call as he may have to instruct others, he wishes
nevertheless to open out his heart to such as he either knows or hopes
to be of like mind with himself, but who are widely scattered in the
world: he wishes to knit anew his connections with his oldest friends,
to continue those recently formed, and to win other friends among the
rising generation for the remaining course of his life. He wishes to
spare the young those circuitous paths, on which he himself had lost his
way.
BIOGRAPHIA LITERARIA
CHAPTER I
Motives to the present work--Reception of the Author's first
publication--Discipline of his taste at school--Effect of contemporary
writers on youthful minds--Bowles's Sonnets--Comparison between the
poets before and since Pope.
It has been my lot to have had my name introduced both in conversation,
and in print, more frequently than I find it easy to explain, whether
I consider the fewness, unimportance, and limited circulation of my
writings, or the retirement and distance, in which I have lived, both
from the literary and political world. Most often it has been connected
with some charge which I could not acknowledge, or some principle which
I had neve Next |